Photographs
by Tallulah Grammar Songstress
Summary: Kaneda and Kei's daughter looks back on her life with them. OC narrator, but focusing on the canon characters.


Photographs

(A/N: Kaneda, Kei and Kai are © Katsuhiro Otomo. The narrator is, I suppose, mine.

This fic is told from the POV of Kaneda and Kei's daughter because I wanted to investigate what those two might have been like as parents. I hope the girl doesn't come across as Mary Sue-ish, she isn't meant to be. Anyway, reviews appreciated as always )

I know I'll have to sort their stuff out sooner or later, so I make myself go back to their home. Already it's emptier; the furniture's been sold or handed off to friends.

Not that they have - had - much anyway.

By the time I was at school, most people wanted to stop living like rats in the ruins. But my parents still liked the idea of making do. Well, she did. He wanted us to be rich, have nice things, a big TV, all the clothes we wanted, well-cooked food and a big house and two cars... but she was different. It wasn't that she wanted us to be poor or anything, she just didn't see the point of wasting money. She was the practical one. He'd say _don't you want, I dunno, a pretty dress or something? _And she'd roll her eyes and say _why would I? I've got enough clothes. We should save that money. _He wouldn't be interesting in saving it, but she'd persist, half-laughing, half-angry. He'd come round to her point of view in the end. He could manage fine with very little. He just liked having more. Well, no. He just liked _me _having more.

I learnt from a pretty young age that if I wanted something, it was far better to go to him. He wanted his daughter to feel loved, I suppose. Wanted to show he _could_ love her and get her anything she desired if he chose. I could have been really spoilt. But she stopped that; she'd talk him out of going too wild.

Stopped me going too wild as well. He'd laugh if I did something naughty; and if I was rude to him he'd be rude back like another kid. She'd tell me off and say to him _don't let her manipulate you. _Then he'd laugh again and pretend he'd been in control all along.

I am getting tearful now. Stupid not to be braver. I always knew I wasn't as brave as them. I don't know exactly what they went through, but a city being torn apart in front of your eyes can't be much fun. I knew that if things got bad again, they'd be ready. I don't know if I would be.

Swallowing, I push open the door and step into the bedroom. It smells musty in here already. The curtains are drawn, and the room is full of cool light.

All the things like books and clothes and shoes are gone. Left on the bed are a heap of random possessions that I, as daughter, finally get the privilege of sorting. There isn't much, really. One of his old ID cards - a button off that coat she used to wear - tools he used on his bike, still with his oily fingerprints on the handles - a piece of wire twisted round to form a ring - letters and papers - and a few photographs, but not many, because for a long time after they got together, you swapped cameras for food and the only way you could get film was by finding a newsagent that hadn't already been looted.

That ring. He got her another one, of course, in the end, and she stopped wearing the original because it was rusting and leaving marks on her finger.

They didn't get married until I was on the way. I suppose they felt they should now that they were Starting A Family. Or maybe they just hadn't had time until then, and her being pregnant slowed them down.

He looks very young in the photo on his ID. Young and obstinate, sneering out at the camera, wearing an expression I've never seen him use in real life. Well, almost never. Once I got into trouble at school and came home crying. He went straight down there, and the whole class was talking for days afterwards about how he all but slapped my teacher round the face. I think he had that expression then.

I suppose you never think of your parents as being kids themselves, but I could always see the boy that he'd been. He was forever being impulsive and then catching himself when she gave him a look. Although she didn't always. Sometimes she just smiled. Sometimes they both acted like teenagers and then I felt left out and would slink away outside, slump down against a wall and stare at the horizon. I know every child has to learn that their parents were people before they were Mum and Dad. Sometimes they even get to know those people, as they grow older. I don't feel like I did, really; I saw who they had been, but I think once I came along they couldn't be those people any more. Wouldn't let me see them, anyway.

And this is only the people that they were _after _the apocalypse. I... I wish more of the people who'd known them before were still alive. When my father was nothing more than a juvenile delinquent. Before my mother was a freedom fighter. I have no grandparents; my mother's parents died when she was little, I think. My father's didn't, but he won't talk about them. I have no family history except that of my parents, and they have too much for two people.

There are a few photos. I think someone had got hold of a camera specially. There's him trying to carry her in his arms. Them kissing. Her holding a shrivelled-looking bouquet of flowers, standing with Auntie Chiyoko. Him with Auntie Chiyoko. Him with a battered-looking bike. The two of them on the back of the bike, looking back and waving - someone's stuck a _Just Married _sign to her back.

Always the ruins in the background.

By the time I was growing old enough to notice the landscape, the destruction was fading. Most of the wreckage was being pulled down; I remember sunlight on miles of bare earth, and long, loud crashes in the night.

I want more photos.

They told me about some of the stuff that had happened before I came along. We studied some of it in history class. They laughed at what I was being told. He grinned when I told him how we'd taken down notes about the group of freedom fighters who repelled the invaders from the West after the destruction of Neo-Tokyo. _Hear that, Kei? We're famous. _

They didn't mention our names, she said, grinning.

Yeah, but everyone'll know it us. Man, I can't believe **I'm **getting taught in schools.

God help the world, she'd said.

They were good parents, and they loved me, but sometimes, usually at three o'clock in the morning, I worry that they never _really _wanted me.

I know I was a quote-unquote surprise. My mother _told _me she was pleased. She said that after everything they'd been through, she'd been frightened they wouldn't both _survive _long enough to have a child.

She had been glad when they pulled down the ruins, because it meant things might be safer for me. Things might be getting back to normal. I wanted to ask even then, what was normal for her, and did she _really _want it? After all, she'd stayed in Neo-Tokyo all her life, even after it was razed to the ground. If you really wanted normality, surely you'd flee. At first I know she stayed because her friends were there, but what about after? When the dust had settled and the Americans had been chased away and the earthquakes had ceased?

I didn't really mind growing up in Neo-Tokyo. When everyone's in the same situation - swaying walls, unpredictable electricity supply, hopping over gaps in the pavements - you don't feel jealous.

But it would have been nice to leave and see what my parents were like when they didn't have the city at their backs. They'd seen it die and be reborn, after all. Maybe that was their child. Maybe they didn't need another one. My father certainly thought the city was his.

And then I came along and claimed him instead.

My mother said he _had _been pleased to have me. Although when I was born, and they found out I was a girl, _then _he'd been terrified. She smiled as she said it. _He would have been fine with a boy, he knew about boys. If he'd had a boy, he could have taught him to ride a bike. That was what threw him. He couldn't introduce you to his bike._

It never occurred to him to teach me. He let me sit behind and cling onto him when he rode, though. But only him. He didn't trust anyone else to be as careful.

He was _furious _when he found out I was dating the brother of someone in one of his gangs. Even more so when I confessed the boy had been taking me out for rides. My mother was cross that I'd been sneaking out behind their backs, but even she thought my father was overreacting in the end. _She is allowed to date, you know. And it's not like you have a problem with motorbikes. _

Look, I know **exactly **what can go wrong with motorbikes! he said. _And I know exactly what bikers are like! And I know that kid, he thinks he knows what he's doing, he thinks he can do **anything, **and then one day he's gonna crash and burn and I don't want him doing that with you on the back! _

He's always careful, I said.

Oh, he tells **you **that!

I lost my temper then. Teenagers always assume they _do _know best, and I resented the way he implied I was being fooled. I shouted at him _Don't order me around! Why do you always have to look after me; I can take care of myself! So what if I'm still a kid?_

He stormed out then, and I was left staring after him, wondering what I'd said wrong (because it's never your fault when it's that age).

When he came back, he acted like nothing had happened. I heard my mother arguing with him, and in the end we compromised somehow. I broke up with the guy soon after anyway.

They never did explain everything to me. Never explained how they suddenly ended up being the heroes of the story rather than just another pair of frightened citizens.

Never explained who got them involved.

One of my father's friends said something once. It had been my turn to storm out this time, complaining at the unfairness of life. I often ended up at his place, lurking there until I'd calmed down. I didn't make many friends at school. My parents were different from everyone else's and somehow I was different too. I played with the children of my parents' friends, other kids whose families had motorbikes in the back yard.

Anyway.

I said, as I often did, that they just didn't understand. What was it this time? Maybe it was curfew. Or another boyfriend. Anyway. He shrugged, and said, _Your dad's just worried. When me and him and the others stayed out late, we... uh, we got up to some pretty wild stuff. He just don't want to think about his daughter doing that._

Everyone said my parents were just worried, but this time I didn't get mad, because I liked hearing about when they were all younger. I sat and handed him tools - he was doing something to a bike, as most of my family's friends usually were - and he kept talking. _Also, I mean, we could handle it. Guys... fighting all the time and that, it wasn't a big deal. But you're a girl. He figures girls are weaker._

I snorted.

Well, okay. But even guys can get hurt. Get killed.

I said, _Yeah, but only if you do something stupid. Does he really think I'm going to go exploring wrecked skyscrapers? I'm not that dumb. _As a matter of fact I _had _clambered into half-destroyed buildings in my time, but I didn't see any need to point this out.

Come on, he said, grinning. _Anyone with his genes's bound to want to do something stupid. Anyway, sometimes it works out different. Sometimes you don't think you're being stupid... sometimes you do just what you've always done, and then something goes wrong and bang, you're dead. He knows that as well as anyone. And..._

he said, grinning. 

He paused, swallowing. I handed him a screwdriver and tried not to look like I was desperate for him to continue.

He lost a lot of people, he said at last. _Me and him... we were the only two who survived, and see, that's cos we turned up late. And... well, you know, he ain't the most brooding kind of guy, but... he was the leader, and he didn't get there in time, and by the time we made it, they were all dead._

he said at last. 

He'd stopped working on the bike by this point, was just sitting there, running a thumb down the side of the screwdriver, not looking at me.

No, they weren't all dead. One of 'em made it out of the warehouse, but then Tetsuo killed him as well. He died right at your dad's feet.

Tetsuo?

Ah. He blinked, and turned back to the bike, all practical suddenly, and shook his head. _Forget it. Old man rambling on, yadda yadda. You know._

He blinked, and turned back to the bike, all practical suddenly, and shook his head. 

Tetsuo.

That name was whispered down all the corridors of my childhood, but never before when anyone thought I could hear.

I stare down at the photographs.

There won't be any of him.

Then I pick up the pictures, shuffle them, find the one of them on the bike together, squinting into the sunlight. Her arms around him, their hair flicking in the breeze, they both look so happy.

Still the ruins all around them.


End file.
